God, Satan, & the Power Rangers

[this is an extension of a long since forgotton debate I had with jaywill who believed in the old testament btw]

see...the power rangers, I never really liked that program, the basic idea was completely screwed up...some little monsters come from far away, so the power rangers dress up in silly costumes and then engage in a bit of pugilism with em...then the monsters get some bigger friends...in return the power rangers summon up some zords and fight em again...then the monsters get some even bigger friends where the power rangers then combine into the megazord and fight them again, and so on...when will they ever realise...whenever evil monsters come just get the freaking ultrazord out and kick their asses totally...stop wasting time...in fact just take a stroll over to evil-monster land and lay waste to them for good!

What has this got to do with God and Satan?...see, God is this all powerful dude that can do what the hell it likes and is fighting an age old battle with Satan (who is just a fallen angel...not even an omnipotent god)...and what does he use to fight the devil?...humans!!! you can just imagine the taunting and the jibes that takes place up in never-never land:

God: Yeah bitch...whatcha gonna do now eh?....I've just made humans hehe...now they will all do as I command them...they won't align with you...you're gonna be all alone mweh hehe hehe...I win!

Satan: Aha!!! but before you made humans I was all alone anyway...and look!! Adam's eating that apple....chalk one up for my team!

God: grrrr...stupid human dis-obeyed me...stupid human tricked me, for that I shall condemn the entire race that I shall create later to Earth...but they will baulk you Satan....you just wait and see!!!

why doesn't God pull out his holy equivalent of the Ultrazord and just destroy Satan immediately...instead of messing about!!!

why does god punish us for sinning?....did he not foresee that we would?...are we able to pull the wool over his eyes? are the plan and schemes of this supreme, omnipotent and all knowing deity a bit crap?

Originally posted by Agerg
why doesn't God pull out his holy equivalent of the Ultrazord and just destroy Satan immediately...instead of messing about!!!

Sssssh! You're hurting His feelings. He never thought of that. And do you
realise what will happen to us now that He knows what to do? We'll be of no
use to God anymore. Damn you, Agerg!!! You sold us all out. For what!? To
look smart in the eyes of God!? Yeah!? Well, I hope it was woooorth it,
paaal. 🙁

Originally posted by stocken
Sssssh! You're hurting His feelings. He never thought of that. And do you
realise what will happen to us now that He knows what to do? We'll be of no
use to God anymore. Damn you, Agerg!!! You sold us all out. For what!? To
look smart in the eyes of God!? Yeah!? Well, I hope it was woooorth it,
paaal. 🙁

see...I'm not trying to look smart, just trying to point out that God seems to be a bit thick! 😉

some of his plans are just pure sillyness! take for instance the idea that he wants us all to believe in him, love him, and worship him, but he stupidly makes sure that we have no physical evidence for his existence, or any way to test for the credibility of his existence such that we atheists (that he spent time creating with such mind-sets that lend themselves to atheism) will never worship him!...he also lets some really sh*tty things happen to people (like suffereing a horrifically painful and long-winded death at the hands of some maniac) without stepping in to show us atheists how nice and loving he is, oh and just to muddle things up some more he allows for multiple religions such that some will worship pretend deities (yet he created them such that they would grow up in a society that feeds em this sh*t from an early age...what does he expect em to worship!)...wtf???...If I wanted all my creations to worship me I'd make it bloody obvious that I existed!!! and that all other religions are BS...I'd ensure that there was no way other than for all people to see the truth of me.

Or what about the classic...Jesus was crucified for our sins! so we sin, and some poor sod (his own son even!) that did nothing wrong gets nailed to a cross and dies a hideous death!!!...not exactly a disincentive for all evil people now is it?...nor does it advertise that God is all loving and benevolent...Surely there was a better solution to be found!!!

Originally posted by Agerg
some of his plans are just pure sillyness! take for instance the idea that he wants us all to believe in him, love him, and worship him, but he stupidly makes sure that we have no physical evidence for his existence

I don't know about "no physical evidence of His existance."

Let's say you are walking in the desert. Suddenly you come upon a chair, a flat piece of wood, four simple legs, and a flat back. What are the chances that you will think this chair is a natural phenomenon? Almost zero. Take the four legs apart and throw the pieces up in the air. How many throws do you think it will take before the legs and the seat part land right on top of each other to form a chair. I am sure you agree that there is no way that will ever happen. Somebody must hve put this chair together.

Now you compare the chair to this complex universe. How can you say that this whole thing has no composer?

Now why doesn't God just fly around on clouds and lightening all the time so we can all love him? Let's say you wanted this certain girl to love you. An let's suppoe you werer rich and powerful. You come in your Lamborghini. Throw money all around. Ask her to go to Paris on your private jet for lunch. Ultimately she agrees, but does she love you? You will never know if it is your money and power she is after or you. A wise person will show her none of the money. He will even test her loyalty before deciding.

O My Brother! Until thou enter the Egypt of love, thou shalt never come to the Joseph of the Beauty of the Friend; and until, like Jacob, thou forsake thine outward eyes, thou shalt never open the eye of thine inward being; and until thou burn with the fire of love, thou shalt never commune with the Lover of Longing.

I agree with some of the problems with religions, but that is not God's fault. The clergy tend to interpret the Word to their liking, and the people tend to follow.

Originally posted by Varqa
I don't know about "no physical evidence of His existance."

Let's say you are walking in the desert. Suddenly you come upon a chair, a flat piece of wood, four simple legs, and a flat back. What are the chances that you will think this chair is a natural phenomenon? Almost zero. Take the four legs apart and throw the pieces up in the air. How many throws d ...[text shortened]... t. The clergy tend to interpret the Word to their liking, and the people tend to follow.

That's the interesting question. Was the earth 'designed' for life, or did life adapt to the conditions of earth?

Originally posted by BigDoggProblem
That's the interesting question. Was the earth 'designed' for life, or did life adapt to the conditions of earth?

What you see is what you get.

Originally posted by Bosse de Nage
What you see is what you get.

Now if we could just explain why some people 'see' god while others do not...

Originally posted by Varqa
I don't know about "no physical evidence of His existance."

Let's say you are walking in the desert. Suddenly you come upon a chair, a flat piece of wood, four simple legs, and a flat back. What are the chances that you will think this chair is a natural phenomenon? Almost zero. Take the four legs apart and throw the pieces up in the air. How many throws d t. The clergy tend to interpret the Word to their liking, and the people tend to follow.

I don't know about "no physical evidence of His existance."

Let's say you are walking in the desert. Suddenly you come upon a chair, a flat piece of wood, four simple legs, and a flat back. What are the chances that you will think this chair is a natural phenomenon? Almost zero. Take the four legs apart and throw the pieces up in the air. How many throws do you think it will take before the legs and the seat part land right on top of each other to form a chair. I am sure you agree that there is no way that will ever happen. Somebody must hve put this chair together.

Now you compare the chair to this complex universe. How can you say that this whole thing has no composer?

ID relies on the following false assumption: that the way this universe turned out and how we turned out is perfection...that there could have been no better way.

Thing is Varqa there is an unimaginably massive and un-countable number of different ways that even just our human form could have taken...we could have had wings, had eyes in the back of our heads, been amphibious, had the strength of a bear etc...instead, though we have comparatively big brains this is offset by our comparatively slow speed & strength with regards to other animals...the fact that we can't fly naturally, we don't adapt so well to the elements as other creatures do...we have to piss out of our reproductive tools, crap not so far away from them, our teeth are prone to decay and falling out before we even reach middle age, we have nails that don't stop growing when they are at the optimal functional length, our cells malfunction and turn into cancers...and so on...
Basically, we could have been *designed* a lot better.

I'm not going to ramble on to you about natural selection...there are other people than myself far better suited to doing that...but within this model, the way in which we came to have this form is justified...our weaknesses aside we are pretty well adapted to most environments by virtue of how we can use our heads and hands to manipulate the world around us...you'll notice that all other creatures are pretty well suited to their natural habitats(what would happen to the lucky off-spring off some fish if it had a mutation such that it's gills didn't function very well?)..if they find new ones then either they don't adapt and die, or they do adapt and propagate.

Basically, there need not have been a creator at all...there are a massive number of ways that the universe could have turned out...it just so happens that it turned out like this! and not like something else (better or worse)


Now why doesn't God just fly around on clouds and lightening all the time so we can all love him? Let's say you wanted this certain girl to love you. An let's suppoe you werer rich and powerful. You come in your Lamborghini. Throw money all around. Ask her to go to Paris on your private jet for lunch. Ultimately she agrees, but does she love you? You will never know if it is your money and power she is after or you. A wise person will show her none of the money. He will even test her loyalty before deciding.

Category error here, the important difference is that I didn't create this girl!!! (for arguments sake, if I did she would have been created such that she was inclined to like people like my self and like less, people that didn't have any of my traits) nor is my influence over her as great as what God's influence is meant to be.

I agree with some of the problems with religions, but that is not God's fault. The clergy tend to interpret the Word to their liking, and the people tend to follow.

People certainly do follow...they follow without proper justification. Many people say that you cannot equate belief in Santa Claus with belief in God...the important difference is that when you challenge the supposed truth of Santa Claus...many adults will back you up...challenge religion and many adults won't, the reason they won't is because their elders didn't (as didn't theirs and so on...) the strength of religion is merely strength in numbers...If there is a God he's culpable because there are a vast number of people that are brought up in a society where they have little other choice than to worship a false deity...and he certainly doesn't intervene when people in the name of religion, (or in the name of someone who pretends to be acting in the name of religion) go round killing people...even those that worship and love the correct(?) god!

Originally posted by Agerg

ID relies on the following false assumption: that the way this universe turned out and how we turned out is perfection...that there could have been no better way.

Actually, the physical world is the world of imperfections. It is the spiritual world that is the world of perfection.

I understand, Agreg, that you see a lot of injustice in the world, and it is making yu question God. But just put away your skepticism and consider this.

We are in a dream down here. When we die, we wake up in a different reality. No harm can come to us in this world. So don't let all the injustice phase you. All we are doing down here is developing our spiritual tools.

Think about a fetus in its mother's womb. It develops, ears, eyes, mouth, hand, legs.... It needs none of these in the womb, but it can not survive out here without them.

In the same manner, we are developing the spiritual tools here that we will need in the spiritual worlds when we wake up.

God is educating us. But we can not learn from a fire hose. God gives us a little at a time. It is like going to school. First grade (Hinduism), second grade (Buddhism), third grade (Juaism), Junior high (Christianity), High school (Islam)... on and on. The problem is that each grade has decided to not go any higher. We are not seeing the connection that each religion is the continuation of the same education.

There are plenty of warnings in the religious books about a return, a second coming, about more information to follow this, but when God send the next teacher, the clergy who do not want to lose their power and status, have the people hunt down the teacher and kill Him.

God is not going to interfere, because then we don't learn anything. We have to jump in the water if we want to learn to swim. He won't let us drown but we will drink a lot of water before we learn.

Originally posted by BigDoggProblem
Now if we could just explain why some people 'see' god while others do not...

They want to hold on to something too slippery for words.

Originally posted by Varqa
I don't know about "no physical evidence of His existance."

Let's say you are walking in the desert. Suddenly you come upon a chair, a flat piece of wood, four simple legs, and a flat back. What are the chances that you will think this chair is a natural phenomenon? Almost zero. Take the four legs apart and throw the pieces up in the air. How many throws d ...[text shortened]... t. The clergy tend to interpret the Word to their liking, and the people tend to follow.

This is the anthropic argument, and is just silly. It's been refuted so many times. All that the existence of the universe proves is that the universe exists, and nothing else.

Originally posted by scottishinnz
This is the anthropic argument, and is just silly. It's been refuted so many times. All that the existence of the universe proves is that the universe exists, and nothing else.

It may be silly, and it may have been refuted a million times before, but it is quite valid. Things that have always existed are things that can not be separated. Take fire and heat. Heat always exists when there is a fire. You can not take fire on one side nd heat to another side. Mirror and image is another example. Image and mirror have always existed together. You can not put the image on one side of the room and the mirror on the other side.

But the universe is a composition. It is made up of elements that can exist on their own. The universe is composed. A composition requires a composer.

Originally posted by Varqa
The universe is composed. A composition requires a composer.

Tell me, does God also order the sand grains on a beach? Or perhaps that's the automatic action of the waves? There are many self-regulating and self organising systems - plants for one (see Magnani (1988); Plants as self-organising systems). The orbits of the planets is simply the interaction between centrifugal forces, and gravitational ones.

Your argument is fallacious.

Originally posted by scottishinnz
Tell me, does God also order the sand grains on a beach? Or perhaps that's the automatic action of the waves? There are many self-regulating and self organising systems - plants for one (see Magnani (1988); Plants as self-organising systems). The orbits of the planets is simply the interaction between centrifugal forces, and gravitational ones.

Your argument is fallacious.

But my friend, if I may call you that. There is order in everything in this universe. Even Chaos has order in it. Growth of the plants, order of the sands, the self regulation that you mention has a formula. It may be easy for you, but I can not imagine all this just happening by accident.

Everything in the universe has a subroutine that regulates its function. We humans are an anomaly. We don't know what our function is, and I think that is by design too.

Originally posted by Varqa
But my friend, if I may call you that. There is order in everything in this universe. Even Chaos has order in it. Growth of the plants, order of the sands, the self regulation that you mention has a formula. It may be easy for you, but I can not imagine all this just happening by accident.

Everything in the universe has a subroutine that regulates its func ...[text shortened]... e humans are an anomaly. We don't know what our function is, and I think that is by design too.

No problem. You may, of course, call me your friend - I hope all on this forum remember that we are ultimately all friends here (most of the time!!).

There is order, but as thermodynamics states, that has to be at the expense of increasing disorder. Our solar system is ordered, yes. The reason? Because of the huge increase in disorder in the sun! The sun emits a huge amount of energy, both as electromagnetic radiation of various hues, and also as gravity (ironically, it's also that gravity which forces the matter in the sun together which makes it "work"😉. The gravity of the sun keeps the planets orbiting, and the moon orbits the earth. Between the sun and the moon, this provides the gravitational energy for the tides. The tides provide the energy for the sorting of those sand grains. Heaviest grains fall out of the moving water column first - they have the most gravity (the relationship between the energy of the water, and the weight of the sand grains is important in determing the profile of sand grain size), lighter grains fall higher up the beach.

The sun provides energy for photosynthesis - and a whole host of other chemical reactions! In order to get order we need an energy input. After that differential survival of chemical compounds (unstable compounds don't stay around for very long, hence stable compounds come to predominate. If those compounds have the ability to self-replicate (many molecules do), then a basic evolutionary process can occur.) can pretty much explain all the chemical order we see.

[edit; and I'm not sure in what way you mean "we humans are an anomaly". We are different from anything that has ever lived before on earth, but so are peacocks.]